Mystery of 200-year-old shipwreck found off US coast

For two centuries it rested a mile from shore, shrouded by a treacherous reef
from the pleasure boaters and beachgoers who haunt New England's southern
coast.

Researchers lower an underwater robot to explore the shipwreckPhoto: AP

2:16PM GMT 09 Feb 2012

Now, researchers from the US Navy are hoping to confirm what the men who discovered the wreck believe: that the sunken ship off the coast of Rhode Island is the USS Revenge, commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry and lost on a stormy January day in 1811.

"The Revenge was forgotten, it became a footnote," said Charlie Buffum, a brewery owner from Connecticut who found the shipwreck while diving with friend Craig Harger. "We are very confident this is it."

On Wednesday, Buffum and Harger braved the raw weather of Block Island Sound to accompany the researchers as they surveyed the wreck site.

The Navy - along with help from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - is using high-tech sensor equipment to map the site, a first step toward retrieving possible artifacts.

If they're successful, they will illuminate a critical episode in the life of one of the greatest US naval officers - and an enemy of Britain.

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Perry is remembered as the Hero of Lake Erie for defeating the British navy in the War of 1812. He was famous for reporting simply "we have met the enemy and they are ours" after the decisive Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.

Two years earlier, the Revenge and its 25-year-old commander were en route from Rhode Island to Connecticut when the ship hit a reef in heavy fog. The area is infamous for its rocky, tide-swept reefs that lurk just beneath shallow waters.

When the Revenge struck the reef, Perry ordered the crew to dump some of the ship's canons to lighten the load. The mast was cut. But it wasn't enough to free the ship.

The crew abandoned the Revenge, and not a single man died.

Harger and Buffum found the shipwreck six years ago after finding a cannon on the sea bed.

They kept their find a secret for five years as they searched the site for more artifacts.

They remain convinced they found the Revenge. After all, they said, no other ship carrying canons from that period is known to have sunk in the area.

The Navy won't accept their theory until they have evidence that the remains laying up to 15 feet underwater are indeed the Revenge.

"We were of course interested immediately when we heard," said George Schwarz, an underwater archaeologist with the U.S. Navy's History and Heritage Command, which oversees the identification and management of sunken naval vessels. "If it is the USS Revenge, then it's 200 years old and it's an incredibly important part of American history."